The FBI admitted on Friday it failed to investigate a specific report in January that Nikolas Cruz could be plotting a school shooting.

The agency said the tip should have been investigated thoroughly because it was a “potential threat to life”. Cruz was arrested on Wednesday and has since been charged with murdering 17 people at a high school this week.

Anger as Republicans Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio call for prayers for victims rather than action on gun control

In the minutes and hours after a teenage gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, politicians began what has become something of a grim ritual following mass shootings: they offered “thoughts and prayers” to the victims and their families.

The response, as it has in the past, drew fierce criticism from Democrats and supporters of stricter gun control legislation, who view the condolences as woefully inadequate as mass shootings become more frequent and more lethal.

Hundreds gathered on Thursday for a prayer vigil at Parkridge church, in Parkland, Florida, after a school shooting in which 17 people were killed. Suspect Nikolas Cruz, 19, was arrested more than an hour after shooting began at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. He was detained after mixing with students fleeing the scene.

The suspect in the school shooting that left 17 people dead in Parkland, Florida, escaped the scene by dropping his rifle and backpack and mixing in with the crowd of fleeing students, authorities confirmed at a press conference Thursday.

Officials also confirmed that the AR-15 rifle he used in the massacre was purchased lawfully in Florida by the gunman over a year ago.

‘I am beyond grief stricken. I am beyond heartbroken. I am pissed as hell,’ a family member wrote on Facebook about one of the victims

The 17 people killed in Wednesday’s high school shooting have now been identified by sheriff’s officials. Three additional victims remain in critical condition. Here are those who lost their lives in the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.

Seventeen people were confirmed dead as the United States endured another horrifying school shooting at the hands of a teenage gunman armed with an AR-15 assault rifle.

Twelve people died inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. Two died just outside the building, one died in a nearby street and two victims died in hospital, a Broward County sheriff confirmed.

A former student opened fire at a Florida high school on Wednesday morning, killing at least 17 people and sending hundreds of panicked students fleeing into the streets while others huddled in classrooms. One student, Ryan Silvera, told how he jumped the school fence to escape

In half of US states, there is no legal minimum age for marriage; a 40-year-old man can, in theory, marry a five-year-old girl. But Florida may soon ban the practice for under-18s. We meet the former child brides campaigning for change

Sherry Johnson was 11 when her mother told her she was going to get married. The bridegroom was nine years older and a deacon in the strict apostolic church that her family attended. He was also the man who had raped her and made her pregnant. “They forced me to marry him to cover up the scandal,” Johnson says. “Instead of putting the handcuffs on him and sending him to prison, they put the handcuffs on me and imprisoned me in a marriage.”

Johnson is now 58, but child marriage is not a thing of the past in the US: almost 250,000 children were married there between 2000 and 2010, some of them as young as 10. “Almost all were girls married to adult men,” says Fraidy Reiss, the director of campaigning organisation Unchained at Last.

Donald Trump says the Trump National Golf Club in Florida is worth more than $50m. Palm Beach County property tax appraiser Dorothy Jacks disagrees, saying the Jupiter course, where Trump plays when he visits nearby Mar-a-Lago, is actually worth $19m.